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For any Virginia folks who're interested -- we'll be having a couple open houses/tomato tastings here on Southern Exposure Seed Exchange's farm this month. This year we're doing two different days, since we had so many people show up last year when we only did one day. This year's days are Saturday, Aug. 20th, 2-4 PM, and Saturday, Aug 27th, 2-4 PM. We should have ~40-50 tomato varieties ripe for tasting by then, plus some peppers and herbs and maybe a few melons. PM me for directions if interested!

We're in central Virginia, in Mineral (near Louisa), halfway between Charlottesville and Richmond.

For any Virginia folks who're interested -- we'll be having a couple open houses/tomato tastings here on Southern Exposure Seed Exchange's farm this month. This year we're doing two different days, since we had so many people show up last year when we only did one day. This year's days are Saturday, Aug. 20th, 2-4 PM, and Saturday, Aug 27th, 2-4 PM. We should have ~40-50 tomato varieties ripe for tasting by then, plus some peppers and herbs and maybe a few melons. PM me for directions if interested!

We're in central Virginia, in Mineral (near Louisa), halfway between Charlottesville and Richmond.

One of the few weeks of the year I will be out of town. Hope you post the results here. Thanks, Gary

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"The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts." C.S. Lewis

I'm fairly new to Tomatoville, so excuse me if you've answered this before. Do you all have a store in Mineral? (I occasionally have court cases in Louisa and would love to stop in - because I'd rather be gardening!)

Hermine has put an abrupt end to any kind of summer garden I had left. After this, I'll have to pull everything out and do a lot of clean up. I hope my cages aren't too badly bent and banged up. All my fall veggies were just tiny seedlings. They've probably drowned. I think I'll just start over with a few greens to get through the fall--some lettuce, collards and kale. What a mess.

I'm fairly new to Tomatoville, so excuse me if you've answered this before. Do you all have a store in Mineral? (I occasionally have court cases in Louisa and would love to stop in - because I'd rather be gardening!)

Southern States in Louisa carries some of our packets, though this late in the year they probably don't have much. Unfortunately, we're not really set up for folks dropping by here randomly -- since our office is on the farm, and we're often busy outside, it makes more work for us to stop what we're in the middle of and get together seeds and get distracted by conversations... best time for stopping in is during our summer open houses. (Or come to the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello this Saturday -- http://www.heritageharvestfestival.com/ -- we'll have almost half our varieties there!)

(Colonial Williamsburg also carries some of our packets, offhand I don't know how many varieties.)

This past Sunday it reached 81 degrees here! I wore shorts... in February... to clean out the rest of my garden. I wish that weather had lasted but it's still been a pretty mild winter and it seems we may be in for an early spring. Once I get some compost worked into my raised beds, I'll be ready to plant cool weather stuff at the beginning of March. I have lettuce and kale seedlings under lights now. Outside, I'll be planting sugar snap peas, some golden beets, radishes and spring onions. Looking ahead to April planting, I've thinned my herb and pepper seedlings and I'll thin the tomatoes soon, and all those will be moved out to the garden around the second week of April. Anybody else started?

It has been a good growing winter! I have 4 or 5 types of kale that overwintered well - its actively growing now in the garden. Much of my garlic is also sending up shoots - hopefully we won't get nailed with really low temps.

I have Candy onion seedlings that look great; and my first wave of tomato seedlings are starting to poke their heads up. This weekend I'll start another group of tomato seedlings along with pepper and eggplant.

You are probably right, Jeff. Our last frost is usually the last week or two of March, but some years, especially lately, I've had to wait to put tomatoes out the third week of April, just to be safe. I sometimes work the Williamsburg farmer's market with my sister and I'm amazed at how much difference there can be in temperature between there and Virginia Beach.

I started all of my peppers this past weekend and a few tomato's
since I had the room. I have a more dedicated spot in mind this year
for my lights and seedlings but I need to install some shelves first.
Surprisingly I have lettuce and kale as well. Pulled up the last of the
carrots last week. We had a very late frost last year that effected my
potato production. I remembered to cover the strawberrys but not the
potatoes so I will be very cautious setting out this year.
Best of luck to everyone. Hope your season goes well!
Gary

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"The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts." C.S. Lewis